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SMARTEL Money, a local mobile money service provider says the market must embrace cashless transactions to limit the spread of Covid-19 through handling cash. The company’s My Wallet mobile money platform was introduced to the market in May 2019 following the licensing of the company as mobile money issuer by the Central Bank of Lesotho.

Less than six months after becoming the first billion-dollar technology company in Egypt, Fawry has hit another milestone by surpassing the $2 billion market cap for the first time. Its stock has doubled in the last six months and closed at an all-time high of EGP 46.90 today, pushing its market cap to over EGP 32 billion. This makes it the fourth most valuable company listed on The Egyptian Exchange (EGX) and it seems that it’s only a matter of days before it takes the second position.

Smartel money is an internet based e-commerce payment system, which intends to be a payment processor for online vendors as well as click and brick businesses, auction sites, grocers and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.

The deal comes at a time when demand for digital payment services is surging due to the coronavirus pandemic. Within the Middle East and Africa region, mobile payments is a popular alternative among 50 percent of the population, most of which is underbanked.

The FinTech sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is also growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 percent, much higher than the average global rate of 11 percent

TPAY Mobile is a digital merchant acquirer that enables payments acceptance from more than 54 mobile payment types and wallets, which are connected to more than 580 million consumers. According to Sahar Salama, founder and chief executive officer of TPAY Mobile, the acquisition of Payguru will support their diversification and expansion strategy.

ince its commercial launch in March 2015, Hello Group has signed up 70 000 Hello Paisa customers, of which 29 000 have downloaded its Android app for remittances. Hello Paisa claims to charge less than 5% of fee. 

So how does Mama Money offer their service at 5% whereas Mukuru, arguably the most popular service over the South Africa-Zimbabwe corridor, charges double this? From our experience of testing these two services, we noted a few key differences in how they operate which is likely to drive the cost differential between the two services. These differences include: · Mama Money maintain low overhead costs. Mama Money operate a single branch in Cape Town whereas Mukuru operate at least seven of their own branches nationally and they also operate through the Inter Africa branch network · Mama Money offer limited support beyond registration. In comparison, Mukuru operate a large 24 hour call centre and live chat function that supports and facilitates transfers. These support functions are no doubt very expensive to operate · Mama Money have a single partner organisation in Zimbabwe. Mama Money only have a single partner in Zimbabwe, CABS bank, whereas Mukuru have partnerships with a number of banks, retailers and mobile wallets. That said, if Mama Money’s Facebook comments are anything to go by, they may be adding more partner organisations in Zimbabwe, so this factor may soon be invalidated So while Mama Money’s competitors charge considerably higher fees, in the case of Mukuru, these higher fees are associated with some value-added benefits for the customer, for instance 24hr support on transactions for the sender and, for the recipient, a choice in how to receive the money.